Ernest

Hemingway:

Modernist Genius

Biography

Cultural mom & outdoorsy dad

Begins love of hunting & fishing

Born in Illinois, summered in Michigan

Journalist, then ambulance driver in

WWI

3 weeks in wounded by shrapnel, 6

months in hospital, 12 operations

Decorated for bravery & fell in love

BiographyHard readjustment, increased

estrangement from family

Married 4 times

1926: The Sun Also Rises

– Finest example of EH style

– Contrasts empty search for sensation w/ rich traditions of Spanish peasants

– Theme: heroes cannot return to that simplicity, too self-aware, but they yearn for it

– Can only develop code & live by it w/ dignity & grace

Biography

1929: A Farewell to Arms

– Soldier & nurse romance

– Life is violence & death, there is no

peace

Increased masculinity: bullfighting,

traveling, big game hunting, war

correspondent; excitement thru danger

Celebrity status

Biography30s: rise in politics in writing, sided w/

poor & peasant classes

Fiercely anti-Nazi

Also successful writer trying to preserve talent in celebrity spotlight

1953: The Old Man and the Sea: Pulitzer Prize; Nobel Prize

in 1954

Shotgun suicide July 1961

StylePioneered this; one of most imitated:

Master of the understatement

Simplified vocabulary & grammar

Master of the compound sentence

Focus on the present

Minimal narrator commentary

Uncontextualized dialogue

“Iceberg” style: 7/8 underwater

StyleOften unsatisfactory endings

Strong & complex men; submissive

women (shows changing gender roles

post-WWI)

Employment of the HEMINGWAY

CODE

Hemingway CodeAll gods are dead

World is a savage place w/o meaning

Man must create his own values & super-impose them on the world

Morality is defined as whatever makes one feel good

Avoidance of :– Abstraction

– Thought

– Speculation (favor action over meditation)

Hemingway CodeAwareness of nothingness & refusal to

discuss it openly

Devotion to duty

Stoicism:

– Control (suppression) of emotions

– Ability to endure

Grace under pressure:

– World is too strong to defeat

– Can retain dignity in face of defeat

Hemingway Hero

Any character who adheres to the code

Not always protagonist, but can be;

often a minor character

Often wounded, often literally, but

almost always symbolically

Knows the essence of life is violence

Disillusioned w/ patriotic conventions of

optimistic society